EEOC moves to end workforce race and gender reporting rule
The proposal would scrap EEO-1 reporting for large employers after 60 years, drawing objections from former agency officials.
By James Whitfield · Staff Writer
2 min read
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has moved to end a long-running rule requiring many U.S. employers to file annual workforce data broken down by race and gender. The proposal matters because the EEO-1 reports have been used for decades to track employment patterns and help identify possible systemic discrimination, according to the agency’s description of the program.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said Tuesday that the commission voted 2-1 to advance the plan. The Republican majority’s vote sends the proposal into a 30-day public comment period, and the commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on August 11.
The reports collect aggregate demographic information rather than identifying individual workers, according to the EEOC. The requirement applies to private employers with at least 100 workers and to federal contractors with at least 50 employees.
The agency says the program currently covers about 73,000 employers and 50 million workers. The data has been collected for 60 years under the EEO-1 reporting system.
Lucas argued in prepared remarks posted on LinkedIn that the reporting requirement conflicts with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. She said collecting race and sex data without a specific allegation “risks hindering effective enforcement” and raises constitutional concerns.
The EEOC also pointed to compliance costs for employers. The agency estimated that employers spend nearly $275 million on the reporting requirement, while the program costs the EEOC $4 million to run.
The proposed rollback aligns with a recommendation in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation policy plan drafted for a future conservative administration. Donald Trump denied links to Project 2025 during the 2024 campaign, but he later named some of its contributors to federal posts, including Brendan Carr as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.
Former EEOC officials have disputed the agency leadership’s rationale. In a May open letter, a coalition of former officials said the administration was claiming that employment data collection pushes employers toward quotas or race-based hiring, a claim the group called inaccurate and unsupported.
The former officials said the argument did not match how EEO-1 information is collected, managed or used. Their letter defended the reporting system as a tool for analyzing workplace patterns rather than a mandate for employers to make hiring decisions by race or gender.
The commission must still complete the public comment process before the measure can receive final approval. If adopted, the change would end one of the federal government’s largest routine collections of workplace demographic data.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.